The dance-rock shapeshifter on flirting with dark identities, trading in the city for the country, the future of big-tent electronic music, and his new album, Beams.

Matthew Dear and I are swinging around Coney Island, 100 feet above the humanity below. We're on the aptly named Brooklyn Flyer-- the kids in front of us squeal and twist their necks as we resolutely hold onto the dinky metal bar in our laps. Here we are: two grown men in our 30s trying not to get dizzy on a ride meant for people who are at least 48" tall.

Dear's motivation for the late June amusement park journey is threefold. First: After ten years of people asking him about his mesmerizing techno, pitch-black funk, and heart-melting synth elegies, he's sick of doing interviews in Williamsburg coffee shops. Second: He's got a history with thrill-inducing metal contraptions-- as a 12-year-old growing up in Texas, he had a season pass to the local Six Flags Fiesta, where his parents would routinely drop him off to live out his wildest roller-coaster dreams. Third: Very soon, Coney Island-- and all of New York City's infinite attractions-- will be more than a mere subway ride away.

This summer, Dear and his schoolteacher wife left Brooklyn after seven years and moved into a converted barn they had built about two-and-a-half hours northwest of all this endless concrete and noise pollution. On the way to Coney, Dear excitedly zooms all the way in on his iPhone map to show me an irregularly shaped speck of blue-- it's the lake in his new backyard (as seen below). "It's always been a dream of mine to have some land," he says. "It's definitely a step into the unknown, but I'm gonna trust my gut. I think I'll enjoy it. And if I don't, I'll force myself to enjoy it. There's no turning back."

But the 33-year-old is not planning to spend the rest of his days sipping lemonade in silence. In fact, if all goes to plan, the move could be an extremely productive one. Dear is building a studio in his new home, where he hopes to make music for himself and others in the coming years. And he's not trying to totally escape the grid, either. He tells me the new place is remote enough that he'll have to pay $7,000 to run a wire for cable internet access. "I can write it off," he rationalizes. "Or maybe I just won't talk to anybody for a few years."

Dear is at a comfortable point in his life, and he got here thanks to a dogged work ethic and an admirable artistic consistency making minimal beats as Audion as well as rubbery, song-oriented dance music under his own name. In person, he's calm and dapper in a light vest, button-up, and olive pants, his hair slicked back just enough. On record, his deep robotic monotone can be ominous, threatening, scary, or oddly touching. Though his new album Beams is sunnier than 2010's superbly lightless Black City, it'd still sound more at home in an underground club than anywhere close to a beach. There's an intriguing disconnect between the smiling, laughing, admirably reasonable Matthew Dear sitting in front of me near the Coney Island boardwalk, and the shadowy, suited-up brooder found in his albums, videos, and shows. We ate some Nathan's fries while talking about that schism, his move to the country, and his take on the evolution of dance music.

"I don't know who the fuck I am, and my songs try to address those moments when we're flirting with identity."

Pitchfork: Black City and Beams seem to be toying with these overarching concepts, though the actual connecting ideas can be murky.

Matthew Dear: The concept is my life: whatever phase I'm going through, my emotional state, my relationships with my friends and family. That is the story. The lyrics can be very amorphous and odd at times, but they're all alluding to feelings and states of being that are universal. It can be done with little words or lines, like in "Earthforms", I say, "It's all right to be someone else sometimes." It's me admitting to the fact that I am not always aware of who I'm going to be from day to day. I don't know who the fuck I am-- that's what the music's all about. We all have these convoluted definitions for the world around us, and my songs try to address those moments when we're flirting with identity.

Pitchfork: You seem like a down-to-earth guy, but some of your music and lyrics could be read as fairly disturbing. Like, on Beams' "Shake Me"-- which is very creepy-sounding to begin with-- you sing, "I laughed when they hit you with their sticks-- you cried."

MD: "Shake Me" was originally written in 2003 and it deals with the darker emotions I had back then. Not to say I don't have those feelings now, but my life is more stable: moving to a barn, having lots of gear, being able to support myself. But there's always a mundane aspect to life that everyone deals with-- there's always going to be lust for something else, and that internal conflict spurs what I write.

Pitchfork: What does your wife think when she hears your darker songs?

MD: We don't dissect it too much from a lyrical perspective, but I think she has similar feelings; if you're with somebody for a long time, you share a lot of the same vocabulary. She'd probably just say that I'm overthinking everything and that I need to get out of my own head.

Pitchfork: On some of your songs, like "You Put a Smell on Me" from Black City, you can sound like a real dirtbag.

MD: Thanks a lot. [laughs] It's always the fear of becoming something you don't want to be. I'm not trying to cop out-- there are definitely dirtbag moments in my subconscious. I've lived a hellish touring life for the last 10 years and I've sacrificed a lot. But I quit drinking two years ago and I've re-focused on music. Now, some that subconscious chatter is: "In another life, would I chase that dragon off into some dark cave and become that guy forever?" A lot of that split personality was always in place.

Matthew Dear: "You Put a Smell on Me"

Pitchfork: If your lyrics were more directly autobiographical, do you feel like they'd just be too dull?

MD: I haven't had a lot of the life experiences that Tom Waits has had. I haven't been in the gutters of cities with a whiskey bottle, puking, ending up in jail; I can't write about the woman that I slept with after meeting her in a bar in Tuscaloosa. In my heart, I haven't found the creative desire to make those stories up-- a lot of really good songwriters allow themselves that, or they take less-glorified versions of events and make these epics that become their songs. But I still like to write about abstract internal conflict more. I mean, I would love to write a classic love song-- a really good A-to-B story-- but it's just not in me right now.

Pitchfork: Have you ever tried to write a song like that?

MD: It's so hard. There's a purity with people like Townes Van Zandt or John Prine: These guys know it because they lived it. But I'm still trying. I fingerpick a lot on guitar, though I'm not saying you need an acoustic guitar to write a song like that. Maybe I'll buy a piano. It might change the way I write. The goal of living in the woods is to immerse myself in all forms of music.

Pitchfork: Thirty-three seems a little young to move out to the country.

MD: It's a preemptive strike, without a doubt. Could I live in Tokyo tomorrow? Yeah. I still have desires to have a fast-paced life; by no means am I saying that I've reached a poetic, stagnant time to just be quiet. I'm looking ahead and I'm realizing that now is the time where I can afford to do it. I'm thinking about the future. With music, you don't know when the next paycheck will come in; I don't have a 401K. I want to be half in and half out. I have a lot of people I want to work with. I have musical goals I still need to accomplish.

Pitchfork: Like what?

MD: I have a lot more to learn from a sonic perspective. I want there to be a bigger sound and more musicality attached to my music. I want to be able to do more with my voice. I want to take singing lessons. I want to learn how to play guitar a little bit better. I want to write those troubadour love songs. I want to continue to make the live show better. I still want to work my ass off. I still have a lot to fucking do.

Pitchfork: Do you think your music will sound different once you're living outside of the city?

MD: I was thinking about that yesterday walking through the streets of Brooklyn. I thought about the subconscious effect that all this humanity was having on me without me even realizing it. For the last 12 years I've always been interacting with people I don't know, whether it be at the bank or the coffee shop. What if all my songs feed off of that stuff? What if I completely crash and burn out in the middle of the woods? What if I don't have any inspiration? But then, that fear of losing everything is probably going to be inspiration as well. I'm an introverted narcissist, I guess.

But on the other side, I've realized that nothing is permanent in this life. That's what Beams is blanketed by too-- the letting go. There are microscopes in life, and you can really zoom in and dissect something, which is fun, but it's always important to zoom back out and say, "OK, this is what I do. I'm a musician. I'm happy, lucky, and blessed to be doing this."

Pitchfork: When you started DJ-ing 10 years ago did you ever imagine that you'd still be on tour and playing music when you were 33?

MD: Yeah, without a doubt. I knew since 14 that this was what I was going to do. It was more of an ego thing. I had this reckless abandon. I knew I wanted to be a performer and I knew I wanted to make music for the rest of my life, though I didn't know in what capacity. We did one show at Joe's Pub in 2004 where I brought an acoustic guitar out and played some of the songs that were going to be on Asa Breed, which hadn't come out yet, and people were like, "What the fuck? This is horrible." I've put myself in many situations where I was not fit or ready to be there, yet somehow I did it anyway. But I needed that to become who I am today. I'm still making tons of mistakes now that I need to be the person I'm going to be 10 years from now. It's all connected. To feel like you've figured it out is horrible to me.

"I'm finally at the point where I've learned how to separate that performer onstage from who I am, yet not feel like I'm faking anything."

Pitchfork: You started off as an electronic musician and DJ, where the idea of performance isn't as important in a live setting. But, seeing your full-band shows over the years, it seems like you've gotten more and more comfortable with the theatrical aspects of the performance-- you dress up, you move in a certain way, you set a mood.

MD: The growth you just talked about was me trying to find the best way to become natural in that theater. It took me a really long time to figure it out, but I'm finally at the point where I've learned how to separate that performer from who I am, yet not feel like I'm cheating anybody or faking anything. Theater is necessary to make the show good. I've never wanted to go up there behind a laptop and just play loops from my album, or hide behind a hood and sing. That's not doing the musical experience-- or the audience-- justice.

So I was like, "How do I perform without coming across as some pompous asshole who wants to put on his lamest Bowie impression?" Not everything's gonna work. There are things I do onstage that might fall flat-- like, I'm not so good at banter. I'm here to perform my music and I don't want to take people out of the theater. You're talking to me now. I'm not a dark person. The show is moody and dark because the music I've created is moody and dark. When I get on stage, it's time to step into that work and get out of my head. On that stage, I'm somebody else. My managerial, let's-get-the-job-done self wouldn't work on stage, so I have to tap into something else within me. But I'm not going to become some alter ego and be like, "Welcome to the dark world!" Some people are complete wild characters as themselves: I'm sure Iggy Pop was Iggy Pop backstage and onstage. But I'm just not that kind of person.

Pitchfork: Between the covers of Black City and Beams (above), you're getting closer and closer to putting your own unobstructed face on the sleeve.

MD: Yeah. People try to push me towards reality, too: "Go on Twitter, talk to your fans." I used to be so against that and hide behind the veil of mystery. Now, I understand the balance and the importance for people to know who I am. At the same time, there's a very important sense of secrecy and separation that you need. I enjoyed not knowing my favorite artists. I don't know what Holger [Czukay] from Can is all about. To me, he's this weirdo genius. I want him to be that guy forever in my head. I don't want him to be like, "Hey, I just picked up a great loaf of bread from the German bakery." But there's somewhere in the middle, where Holger can say interesting, poignant stuff that I wouldn't be too offended by. There's an accessibility that needs to be there in this day and age, but let's keep some of the mystery.

Pitchfork: As someone who's been involved with dance music in some way for a decade, what do you think about the recent explosion of the culture through festivals and massive DJs?

MD: It's crazy. I remember back when I first started trying to do vocals over electronic, tech-house music, and people would write, "What the hell is going on?" And now it's all OK; pop music is Ibiza music. There are no rules, and that's great. I'm not judgmental about anything. People can do their crazy rave festival mashup or their epic trance thing, so long as they care about the sound quality and the mix, and they appreciate the fact that their music is going to be played on these really loud sound systems that are going to be heard by 50,000 people at once. Don't make anybody go deaf. That's my only concern. Someone like Skrillex sounds good, he has great mixing and engineering. I'm fine with that.

Pitchfork: Do you think this wave of popularity for electronic music is different than previous ones?

MD: Yeah. Ten years ago, electronic music was still very underground. There was a lot of negativity attached to the music; promoters and venue owners were really rolling the dice because they didn't know if they were going to get slapped with a $20,000 fine or get sent to jail. Now it's completely different. There are people writing checks who are going to make sure that this stuff is going to get done legitimately. There's an avenue for it to reach the masses because you have marketing and massive companies behind it because they know they can get money from it.

I think it's great because all these hundreds of thousands of kids going to these festivals in Vegas and New York-- wearing furry boots, living the rave dream-- are binge-drinking music. They're taking it all in. They don't care about quality-- it's about the epic build and formulaic comedown. But five years from now, they're going to stop that, and there's a good chance that 20% of those people will stick around and start finding avenues towards Aphex Twin and Kraftwerk and Basic Channel. That's fantastic. That's going to be an influx of people that are going to make this music last longer and be relevant. That's all I care about.

Pitchfork: Now that electronic music is more accepted, have you ever thought about...

MD: ... cashing in? [laughs] I'm never abandoning electronic music. I still DJ. And what I'm thinking about doing next is apply everything I've learned from Black City to now-- the attention and the detail that I've realized you have to bring to the live side, sound mixing, engineering, performance, sound quality, song quality-- to Audion. But there needs to be a yearning desire for me to do something. I can't force it to happen, like, "Oh, I should do Audion because fees are huge right now and I could probably make a lot of money." That's not motivation enough for me.